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Wednesday, April 11, 2012

It is no secret that an infinitesimally small number of people own a vastly disproportionate amount of wealth. Therefore, it should be no secret that our economic/political system is based on the greed of this infinitesimally small number of greedy power-hungry people. Yet, most Americans still believe that the governing class is well-meaning, albeit, a little dense.

Never mind the continuous creation of government policy that is hell-bent on depriving increasing numbers of us the means for self-provision. Never mind the too-big-to-fail banks that keep growing; the trillions in backdoor bailouts to Wall Street; the extension of tax cuts for the rich; unilateral executive, warrant-less surveillance; never-ending wars; crushing student debt load (student loan debt has grown 511% in 10 years), and Supreme Court rulings that allow strip-searches for traffic violations, and unlimited political expenditures by corporations. Meanwhile major corporations have not paid any taxes for the last four years. In fact, many corporations make more money after taxes. That's right. They have a negative tax rate!

Last year, Citizens for Tax Justice found that 30 major corporations had made billions of dollars in profits while paying no federal income tax between 2008 and 2010. Today, CTJ updated that report to reflect the 2011 tax bill of those 30 companies, and 26 of them have still managed to pay absolutely nothing over that four year period:

If they paid the 35% rate, that would've been $78.3 billion more in federal income taxes.